Well I’ve sold my first link! I’ve replaced a link to ‘Which Budget’ to a similar site that I find just as helpful and easier to use… so I don’t feel like I’m selling my soul! The link is on my Travoholic.com Budget Airlines page and I’ve charged $25/year. I have no idea if that’s a fair price or not but I’m happy with it, especially since it only took 10 seconds to change and it’s replacing a link I had already (so I’m not adding an extra outgoing link). Plus I just set up a Paypal account and it’s nice to see a balance in there… even if it is small.

I’ve had a committment of $5/month for a link on the front page of Working Holiday Info but I just need to work out how to set up Paypal to accept automatic monthly payments. Any ideas? Otherwise I’ve been offered $50 for the year so we’ll see. I would prefer monthly though. Plus I’ve sold a link through Linkworth for $20/month so I’ll get 70% of that I think. I just need to work out how to set that one up and then it’ll be all good!

So I’ve got some money coming in (finally!) from sources other than Adsense and this is without much effort at all. I think there is a lot of opportunity for selling links directly just through people I find at Digital Point and will be exploring this more in the future. The links I’ve sold through the forum have been through answering people’s ads who were looking for sites to advertise on. I’m curious about what the response will be once I start posting ads myself looking for advertisers… just need to work out this monthly Paypal thing and set some prices!

I think this little boost is what I need to get my motivation back!

After yet another sub-$100 month with Adsense and no success on the affiliates front I’m going to switch gears a bit and go for some link sales.

I registered with Link Worth awhile ago but totally forgot about it. I got an email a few days ago saying that I’d made a sale for $20 for a rotating link on my main page so I’ve sort of been inspired to look into selling more links this way. I still have to work out how to install the code though! It’s times like these I wish I were more of a computer geek.

So I registered today with Text Links Ads and I’ve also been trawling the Digital Point forums and have had a few offers come from that. One was for $25-35/month for a sitewide link and the other was asking what I would charge for a link to his site in the form of a recommendation (in place of another site that’s always been there for free).

I think if I can manage to sort out the code for this Linkworth offer and the sitewide link for this month I’ll be really happy. That’ll be an increase of 50% on the previous month’s earnings which is much better than the 0% ‘jumps’ in income over the past few months!!

This is all new to me so even putting a value to a link on my page is a bit confusing. I’ll keep you informed of how things turn out.

I’ve been pretty slack for awhile now. Not sure what’s gotten into me. It might be the fact that I can’t seem to break $100 with Adsense and I’m finding it discouraging. Same for October, earned about $95 with $5 coming through hostel bookings.

I know full well that Adsense isn’t the way forward but it would seem to make sense that adding more content and more sites would equal at least a bit of a jump up in Adsense earnings but that’s not really proving to be the case. There’s not a lot of things that are more motivating that seeing hard work pay off financially and so far that hasn’t been the case… although I have to admit that I haven’t really been working all that hard.

I might try a totally different approach for this month and focus exclusively on getting my new affiliate program oriented site (Working Holiday Travel Insurance) going well. I really need to find more affiliates for Canadian and American travellers and I might even experiement with some Adwords promotion.

It will be difficult for me because I don’t have any interest in travel insurance whatsoever! We’ll see how it goes.

Well as Webby gets ready to take off on another exotic adventure, I seem to be stuck in some dodgy time warp in front of my computer. Not only have I not made any more money despite having pumped out a few extra sites - but I seem to be making less! Ok seriously now… time for a kick in the pants!

Two things I think I’ve been neglecting are adding more content to my current, most successful site and also getting new incoming links. Instead I seem to be spending time on fixing little back end things and tweaking bits that annoy me but that no one else would ever notice. Judging by all the ‘content is king’ preachers on webmaster forums I think I should start taking their advice and flesh out my main site a bit. Especially since it doesn’t seem to take too long for new articles I write to get picked up by Google and bring in good traffic.

So tonight I think I’ll finish off some half-finished bits of literary genius. I actually find putting a new article up on my site to be the most rewarding out of any of the tweaks and additions I make so here’s hoping I can learn a lesson and get back on it!

Kirsty

Well my travel insurance site is well and truly on its way. Just have to write a few articles, try and find a few more insurance affiliates for US and Canadian backpackers (which I am having a surprisingly hard time doing… it seems to me like the online insurance market is far more developed for UK residents), and design a logo of some kind. That site is very affiliate-oriented so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. I think it will be difficult to get traffic to it because of competition but hopefully it will be useful for people and will catch on.

I’ve also added a lonely affiliate link to Amazon on one of my sites. At the moment it links directly to Amazon.com’s sales page for the book but I have plans to link it to a page on my site where there will be a review and then out to Amazon. Will also add more books but I’ve never really had much success with Amazon in the past. Does anyone really make any money with it?

Plus tonight I’ll be adding The Beer Belly to my Van Tour page. I’ve got another party site in the works too so I think this is a good fit and am interested to see how it goes. All small potatoes though since this site doesn’t get any traffic until the beginning of the summer!

Will keep you posted.

Well after another sub $100 month with Adsense ($92) I’m switching gears a bit. Spurred on by Webby’s admission that 75% of his income is currently coming from affiliates, I’ve finally gotten the point.

I think I’ve found a pretty good niche for flogging travel insurance and am working hard at setting it all up. Coupled with one of my other sites (both with good .com domain names stacked with keywords) I think I’ll be able to have a crack at really becoming a reliable, trusted authority on the subject on the net. If I can manage to do this then I think there are some good things in my future.

I’m only being mysterious until I finish this current site but all will be revealled hopefully next weekend and I’ll be looking for some feedback. Yep, I’ve changed my focus yet again!

Well I’ve started yet another project. I know I’d said I would focus on finishing my current sites and adding affiliate programs to them but, let’s face it, I’m crap. And that’s boring stuff anyways!

My latest project will be interesting in more ways than just how much money it might make me. It’s an extremely niche idea that focuses on a particular event, in a particular city, aimed at a particular nationality of a particular age range probably with pretty similar interests.

The event is only one day out of the year which has me wondering if it will be worth it so it’ll be interesting to see if it pays off. I’d guess that a minimum of 10,000 people would actually participate in the event with lots of other interest generated and another general audience than isn’t targeted beyond being in the same city but there would be possible interest from them year round depending on how I structure the site.

There are currently no other sites dealing with this event and my Travoholic.com site comes up first for Google in the major keywords so I’d be able to a ‘For more information see…’ type link at the bottom which would pretty much ensure that most people who search on Google will eventually make it to the site, whether it ranks high itself or not.

So… after this long-winded load of bollocks I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve got a really niche market and I won’t have an problems attracting them to my new site and am excited to see what can really be done with a niche market.

This is the type of thing where merchandise would hopefully sell well so I will be pushing some Café Press stuff and will spend some time coming up with clever designs and slogans. A guy from work is on board and says he has some cracking ideas so I will probably flog his designs as well and go 50/50 on the profits. But you rarely hear about Café Press when people talk about making money online so I’m pretty curious to see how it goes.

I have my doubts as well about whether I’d be able to attract any advertisers (that aren’t non-Adsense or affiliate related). I think that because the market is very targeted there would normally be some interest in reaching it but because the event is only for a day and there’d be a huge peak and drop in traffic I just don’t know.

So I’m looking at this as my little niche experiment. I know that the site will be useful, will generate a decent amount of traffic (the related page on my site had around 300 visits per day over a short period of time), and will reach a pretty targeted audience. What I’ll be able to do with this is anybody’s guess.

Anybody have any guesses about what the event might be? Once I get the site up and running in a couple of weeks I’ll post a link and will be in search of plenty of feedback!

I love the days when I sit down at the ol’ computer and actually get loads of things done.

Yesterday I started tinkering with Google maps and came up with a pretty good idea and decided to update one of my sites. Over the course of the day I was able to learn the ins and outs of Google maps, pound out the entire layout (minus a logo but I can do that later), transfer most of the content over from my old site, create most of the images that will be used across the whole site, and pound out a good system for organising everything.

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I really should have been outside enjoying it and then I was supposed to go to the pub and gave that the arse BUT I’m pretty impressed with the amount of work I got done and am really excited about this new project. The site will be very labour intensive at first but I think this has the most potential out of any of my sites so I’m pretty pumped.

Problem now is that I’m off to Scotland on Wednesday for 10 days so who knows if I’ll be able to keep the momentum going when I get back. I’ll post a link once I get things fleshed out a bit more.

Oh and for those of you who are starting a new site and need a bit of help on the design side, I found a pretty helpful site for choosing a colour scheme at works: Color Schemer

Well I’ve done it! My first ever $100 month… but I needed a bit of help from an affiliate. Adsense earned me just under $100 and the whopping $6.47 I earned from Hostelworld.com bookings gave me that little boost to reach my goal. People with travel websites seem to feel that August is generally a slow month, so I’m pretty encouraged by having my best month yet, even if it is only by a few dollars.

My traffic has been steadily increasing over the course of the year but fell off by a little bit in August as compared with July. Still good though at an average of 105 unique visits and 500 page views per day. My Working Holiday Visa site has been getting a bit of traffic from Yahoo and MSN but has yet to see any action from Google. I’m going to try really hard this month to finally finish this site off completely (there are still those little frustrating bits of research to do and content to write) and put a push on link exchanges to get things going with Google. I expect big things from this site once I get the links out there and start getting traffic from the Goog.

It seems like I’ve been saying this for ages but I’m going to start adding more affiliate programs to go with my sluggish Hostelworld.com account. I might concentrate on introducing a couple a month and really try to get them integrated into my site well rather than just plastering affiliate links all over my site.

I’ll be in Scotland and Spain and away from my computer for 10 days in September so it will be interesting to see what sort of impact this might have. I think I’ll make it my goal to finish the Work Visa site and try and swap 5 links before I head off on the 6th… wishful thinking since I’ve got a bit of a full weekend but ya never know!

As if the idea of working when I want, where I want isn’t good enough, I also find myself very motivated be the idea of having complete creative control over everything I do and having an actual impact on the people who stumble across my sites. I have convinced myself that being a web publisher (that’s what I’m calling it these days) is quite possibly one of the best gigs going.

General advice says to build sites about topics you’re passionate about so creating content, in theory, should be something you enjoy doing – unless you totally hate writing. In order to get ideas for your new content you’ll have to participate in you area of expertise which will also be fun for you if you’ve got a passion for it. In my case, I have several travel websites. On one of them I have hostel reviews and encourage submissions from readers. If I’m earning plenty from my sites the potential is there to head off on trips aimed at writing more hostel reviews which would mean visiting hostels all over the world which would be a pretty damn good gig as far as I’m concerned.

I think the fact you’re working in a field you love, have total control over everything you do, have a positive impact on lots of people, and get to play at being an entrepreneur with very little risk all adds up to a really great way to earn a living!